Making partnerships work, walking the talk

In today's world of development there is much talk about partnerships, often without the walk. Often times, little thought goes into planning and managing the partnership or identifying that there is a need for well-trained facilitators and partnership brokers. Far too many people and organisations facilitate partnership-building without a basic understanding of what is involved, or the level of commitment that is involved. That is, if you want to avoid arm's length partnerships, and nurture deep and equal partnerships that will contribute to real change.

Over at Rurality much time has been spent reflecting on partnerships and pulling together important resources that you might find useful for partnership planning, managing, monitoring and evaluation. This includes partnership kits and factsheets as well as information on improving facilitation of partnerships and partnership brokering. These resources can be found here.

For those particularly interested in the complexity of partnerships and becoming better-equipped to plan for them you might be interested in the training offered under the Partnership Brokers Accreditation Scheme (PBAS). We know of at least three people in the region who are now accredited under the PBAS scheme, including one person from SPC's very own DSAP project. Congratulations Bernie!